Why cutting students’ clinical placement hours is a bad idea

Reducing the clinical practice hours required over the course of the nursing degree would come at a price to education standards and therefore patient care

Now that the NHS workforce plan has been published, it’s clear where the government stands on reducing clinical placement hours for nursing students.

It may be a controversial idea in the profession, but it’s one NHS England says it wants the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) to embrace, stating that cutting the requirement from 2,300 hours to 1,800 over the course of the degree would create extra training capacity in the NHS while giving students ‘high-quality learner experience’.

Any move to change the length of degree programmes or placement hours would reduce practical